NORAD Santa tracking program
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The holiday season of 2005 marked the fiftieth anniversary of NORAD's annual tracking of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
In 1955, a Colorado Springs-based Sears store ran an advertisement encouraging children to call Santa on a special hotline. Due to a printing error, the phone number that was printed was the hotline for the Director of Operations at the Continental Air Defense (CONAD), Colonel Harry Shoup, a stickler for rules who took the first Santa call on Christmas Eve of 1955 from a six-year old boy who was reciting his Christmas list. He didn't like jokes at all, but after another call, and his asking the mother of the second caller what was happening, then realizing the mistake that occurred, he promptly instructed his staff to give the location of Santa's position to any child who called in.
Three years later, the governments of the United States and Canada combined their national domestic air defenses into what is now the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). The tradition has carried on since after the merger and nowadays major media outlets in addition to children call in to inquire on Santa's location. NORAD relies on many volunteers to help make Santa tracking possible. Many employees at Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson Air Force Base spend part of their Christmas Eve with their families and friends at NORAD's Santa Tracking Operations Center in order to answer phones and provide Santa updates to the many thousands of callers. For the last several years, thanks to the internet and even corporate sponsors such as AOL, the tradition continues. In 2004, NORAD received more than 35,000 e-mails, 55,000 calls and 912 million hits on the Santa-tracking website from 181 countries. In 2005, more than 500 volunteers answered questions [link].
The WHOIS lookup for noradsanta.org lists its administrative contact at an address in Exton, Pennsylvania, to Scott Reynolds of Analytical Graphics, Inc.
External links
Sources
[History of the program from NORAD]
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